


If Chaos Was Lightning

by Lucy_Claire



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series, Teen Wolf (TV), specifically - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, Nogi is an alien, Nogitsune Stiles, Star Trek AU, Teen Wolf in Space, Vulcan! Derek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:52:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3104549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucy_Claire/pseuds/Lucy_Claire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Nogitsune arc IN SPACE! </p><p>Featuring Vulcan Derek, First Officer Stiles and Captain Scott</p><p>Heading to their Shore Leave location, the USS Enterprise sails through an anomaly above the Class M-planet. The anomaly, a thundercloud-in-space seems harmless up until it electrocutes Stiles and somehow infects him with a sentient Black Hole known as the Nogitsune, who wants to possesses Stiles first then the universe next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Star Trek AU:  
> Scott McCall – Captain  
> Stiles Stilinski – First Officer  
> Derek Hale – Science Officer  
> Lydia Martin – Communications Officer  
> Melissa McCall – Head Nurse  
> Isaac Lahey and Allison Argent – Co-pilots
> 
> Don't forget to comment & kudos <3
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr: http://lucyclairedelune.tumblr.com/

                          

_If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!_

                                                                                                                                                                   – Terry Prachett, _The Color of Magic_

 

_“Captain’s Log, Stardate 2259.5,_

_Our shore leave destination, the planet Hotaru in the Theta-Muscae star-system, will be a good chance for us to stretch our legs for a week or two…”_

Stiles draped himself over the back of the captain’s chair, perching his chin on Scott’s shoulder and gazing over the heads of Helmsmen Lahey and Argent, to the big dotted blackness of space.

Scott unflinchingly continued his monologue. After the end of the Kanima Crisis of Alpha Lacerta earlier this week, no one dared question their absurdly youthful captain and first officer anymore. Though some considered his and Stiles’ unrestrained ease with each other unprofessional, others found it confusing and Science Officer Hale found the on-deck intimacy, and Stiles’ ‘disrespectful’ manner with the captain, annoying.

Then again, everything annoyed Derek Hale.

“Vulcans do not experience annoyance,” was his usual answer when Stiles asked what got him all green in the face every time Stiles talked to him or Scott. Every time Stiles reminded him that he was _half-_ Vulcan Ol’ Sourpuss got even more annoyed.

Stiles winked at the disapproving Vulcan and wagged his eyebrows suggestively for good measure, “Like what you see?”

He only received a quirked eyebrow in response before Derek turned back to his station. Communications Officer Lydia Martin shook her head at Stiles, her full lips pursed to the side in an unamused smirk.

“What?” he mouthed.

Quick, precise movements of her hand signed out “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop flustering the Vulcan.”

Stiles cast his eyes to the back of Derek’s head, the tips of his pointy ears flushed green, from either anger or embarrassment, he definitely wouldn’t admit to either. He liked getting a reaction out of Derek whenever he could, it didn't usually take much considering their first meeting involved a drunk Stiles and a fresh-off-the-shuttle Derek who had come to the bar by Starfleet Academy to observe humans in their natural habitat. 

Word of advice, "Are you an alien, because your ass is out of this world," is not a good pick-up line to use on a Vulcan, especially a Vulcan that turned out to be your TA. 

Stiles shook off the embarrassing memory and set his chin back on Scott’s shoulder and continued looking at the main screen, watching their ship close in on the rotating yellow spot that was their vacation destination.

Yeoman Yukimura came up to Scott, handing him a PADD with her eyes downcast bashfully. Scott, the goober, trailed off and gave her a fond, lopsided smile as he signed off on the silver tablet’s screen.

Stiles wanted to tease them about their lingering looks and their school-crush conversations that were filled with awkward pauses and giggles, but he backed off a little ever since he found out that Kira Yukimura was as nervous and flail-y as a fox walking the tightrope. He just settled for nodding at Scott encouragingly and reminding Yukimura every now and then that yes, Scott and Helmsman Argent broke up long before the ship set off on its five-year mission.

Like she had a sixth sense, Helmsman Argent twisted around and stared at the couple in mention. Ever since Scott cooled his obsession with her Allison Argent still acted like she had some sort of claim on him even though she’d been bumping uglies with Lahey for months.

You don’t get to dump his best bud then linger around like a lioness patrolling her territory, snapping her jaws at anyone else who’d dare come near her freshly-killed zebra, all the while having on your own pickings of the zebra in another territory. What if some other admittedly-awkward lioness wanted to try her hand at zebra-killing without you glaring at the back of her head?

Not that Scott was a dead zebra. Overenthusiastic German Shepherd was more like it, usually in happy-puppy mode and good-naturedly wagging his tail, but if you seriously crossed him or his beloveds he’d go full-blown papa wolf and bite out your throat.

Stiles settled for wrinkling his nose at Allison. “Eyes on the road, Argent.”

She gave him a confused, questioning look before turning back.

Okay, so maybe Stiles was a bit bitter, a big part of him still saw Allison and Lahey as the ones who stole Scott from him, taking up so much of his attention that he practically forgot Stiles for days at a time, but things were getting better. Scott and Lydia did ask him to try to be a bit nicer though. 

Stiles turned his attention back to his Scott, who was intently listening to Kira babble on about how the planet Hotaru was famous for it’s culture’s resemblance to East Asia back on Earth and how it was believed to have been first settled by actual Asians who crossed to this corner of the universe through a wormhole.

Unfortunately, that was not the most interesting thing about Hotaru.

When they entered the planet’s orbit a large, rumbling grey thundercloud blocked their screen, sucking them in before they could try to avoid it. Lightning rippled around them as thunder roared within the cloud, shaking the ship, knocking everyone on deck sideways and making the lights flicker worryingly.

Stiles crashed down between Lydia and Derek, his blood buzzing and quick, mild spasms shaking the right side of his body like he had been electrocuted.

“Mr. Lahey, hit Warp Factor 7,” Scott ordered, gripping the armrests of his captain’s chair.

“But, sir –”

“Now!”

Like a rock in a slingshot, the ship was stretched back, gathering up momentum and feeling like it was being elongated, slowing down everything around them until the engines kicked in and it shot through the cloud and way into the planet’s atmosphere. Argent and Lahey quickly hit the brakes and they hovered among the planet’s actual clouds.

“What was that?” Scott asked. “Was that a storm, this high up on the planet?”

“No, no, that’s impossible,” said Stiles, pulling himself back up behind the chair. “Clouds, weather clouds, not just the pretty swirly colors that come out of a dying star or a clump of stardust, they’re like the sign that road sign that says You Are Now Leaving The Planet. There can’t be weather where there’s no atmosphere, right, Derek?”

Without missing a beat, Derek expanded upon Stiles’ point, “Clouds are a chemical or element suspended in the atmosphere of a planet in a habitable zone, if one rises above the virtual ceiling of the planet which holds enough air and moisture to create clouds and the gravitational force to cause any magnetic sway to the weather then they are in space. No gravity, no oxygen, no moisture, no clouds, at least not one this big and in anyway active.”

“Then what could be?” asked Lydia, tapping around her station, initiating contact with the planet. “This makes no sense.”

“We can figure that out later,” said Scott. “Our issue now is that we can’t dock in the planet’s gravitational field and might need to land. Lieutenant Martin, contact the Intergalactic Affairs Department of Hotaru and request an emergency landing.”

Lydia pressed her coiled silver earphone into her ear. “Already on it.”

A minute of hurried speaking in Hontaran later, Lydia gave Scott the okay to land.

The Enterprise sailed down and landed on a field right near the seaside capital city they picked for their shore leave.

Everyone disembarked. Scott led the way with the steadfast, straight-backed march of a commanding officer, Lydia at his left, trying to refresh her rusty accent by mumbling Hontaran words under her breathe, and Stiles at his right, his mind going at a thousand miles-per-second, trying to remember if he had ever studied anything like this in his Xeno-Geology course back at the Academy.

Too caught up in his scattered thoughts, Stiles’ right leg buckled right under him with a hot painful spasm.

An arm quickly hooked around his waist and hoisted him back up. “Thanks, Scotty,” was out his mouth before Derek set him back on his feet.

Derek let go of him like had been burned and clasped his hands behind his back. “Watch your step, Mr. Stilinski.”

“Uh, thanks?” Stiles shook his weakened leg, the back of his calf hurt like a bitch, whatever burst of lightning that wormed its way on deck couldn’t have hit him that hard if it hit him at all. Even if it did, why would it pull a muscle in his leg and cramp his hand?

They fell into step as they neared the representative welcome party came up to Scott, decked out in an odd futuristic variation of traditional Japanese garb, iridescent dresses that shimmered like sunlight on rippling water and their faces made up in white face-power, cat’s eye eyeliner and yellow and green layers of eyeshadow bringing out their amber eyes. The women had their hair in buns and the men had their hair hanging past their shoulders.

The woman at the very front, who introduced herself as Noshiko, welcomed them civilly, her orange-ish eyes scanning them all as she listed off a few landmarks, named a few tour guides and guaranteed the safety and tune up of their ship. Noshiko’s eyes lingered a bit longer on Kira, her slit pupils dilating quickly. “I will be overseeing your stay here. Any questions?”

Stiles steadied himself with a hand on Scott’s shoulder, the spasms in his right knee getting worse. “Yeah, what’s up with that cloud?”

Noshiko didn’t even glance up. “It’s nothing, I assure you. It comes and goes every couple of decades or so. Now, if you’ll please follow me.”

Like a hoard of tired and dazed ducklings, the crew followed Noshiko without another word. Lydia and Allison linked arms and walked a little further front, pointing at Hotaru’s three moons, each in a different phase among the peach, pink, purple of the sunset.

Stiles threw an arm around Scott’s shoulders, easing his limp. “Suspicious much?”

Scott wrapped an arm around his waist to let Stiles lean on him. “Stiles, if they say it’s nothing then it’s nothing.”

“Which means it’s definitely something, Nothing is what you say when you’re hiding something, or else why would say you say it’s nothing?”

Scott blinked confusedly, taking in Stiles’ rushed babbling. “Right.”

“You see my point, a space cloud is something.”

“Something that could be pretty harmless here but strange where we’re from, just like the flying snakes would have been a life hazard on Earth but they were like puppies to the people of Zeta Ophiuchi.” Scott nudged him ahead, tapping him on the back comfortingly. “We’re off-duty, remember? Turn your brain off for a minute.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Scott didn’t take the bait, he never did. Being friends with Stiles his entire life he knew that insults and sarcasm about his lesser IQ and optimism were just Stiles being frustrated rather than being hurtful. After all, it’s not like having a high IQ and a brain that thought at lightning-speed did Stiles any favors, coupled with having ADD it’s a wonder he could ever get anything done. Scott had the gift of being limited, able to give his all in one focused task at a time and keep his head on straight, which is what won him the captaincy of the Enterprise.

This was why they made a great team, Scott was brave, loyal, a bit more sly than you’d think and always knew how to weigh his options in a bad situation, Stiles was the planner, the chess master and always knew how to weasel his way out of any situation.

Lydia traded Allison with Isaac and linked her arm with Stiles’, dragging him along with her. “Scott’s right, you need to relax, and find a medic.”

“Can’t Melissa patch me up back on the ship?”

“Off-duty,” Lydia reminded him in a sing-song tone. “Come on, I heard that they have professional healers, I can get a massage and you can get your leg checked.”

“Think they can also help Derek get that stick out of his ass?”

“Your silly crush on him is getting a bit out of control?”

“Crush? Him – I – I don’t – I can barely stand him,” Stiles denied, whatever solid defense he could have cooked up was reverted to a brain fart.

“Oh, please, you’ve been pulling his pigtails – or his pointy ears – since our last year at the Academy, always asking those tough questions in class just to try to prove him wrong.”

“Hey, I always had a point.”

Lydia didn’t bother with a full eye-roll because halfway through her hopeless sigh her face lightened up. “Of course you did.”

“I know that face, that’s your Bad Idea face.” Stiles looked behind him where Lydia’s eyes had focused on a lone Derek, looking both uninterested and lost. “Don’t you dare –”

“Mr. Hale!” Lydia’s raspy voice overtook his own.

Derek turned his head towards them, slanted eyebrow quirked questioningly.

“We’re going to a medicine shack right across the river, I remember you said that your reflexes and heartbeat have been slower since the Kanima Incident, want to join us at the medicine shack to check for left-over Kanima venom?”

Derek nodded and walked over to them, hands behind his back. “That would be beneficial.”

Lydia clapped excitedly, a hint of an evil grin directed at Stiles. “Alright, let’s go.”

She led the way, her red uniform dress and strawberry blonde hair nearly blending with the darkening sky as she crossed the wooden bridge stretching over the purple river, leading to the medicine shack.

That left Derek and Stiles strolling after her in an awkward silence. Stiles could feel Derek’s unwavering stare on him.

“Is there something on my face?”

Though his face stayed fixed with the same neutral expression, Derek’s pupils grew like an excited cat’s, turning the hazel-green of his eyes into a thin ring. “Apart from a light scattering of moles, no, I don’t believe there is.”

Was that sarcasm he detected?

“Whatever. What do you think of the storm up there?”

They were halfway across the bridge, Lydia had crossed it so fast she left a cloud of dust in her wake. She was in deep conversation with the geisha-like women at the medicine shack/spa that was, like everything else, a merge between traditional Japanese rectangular building with the pointed roof and its curled edges.

“I find it irregular, so unless I get close enough to run a scan on its chemical makeup I can’t tell for sure. But as I have come to learn during my stay on the Enterprise not much in space follows a logical pattern or has much rhyme or reason that can answer our questions about the universe.”

“Forty-two,” said Stiles, stifling a giggle at the thought.

Derek frowned lightly, head tilted to the side like an owl. It was a bit cute. “Forty-two what?”

“Forty-two, _the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything_.”

Derek’s frown deepened for a second, his eyes looking back and forth from Stiles’ face to the three moons now rising higher up into the all-shades-of-purple sky. Stiles almost felt bad for him, being so literal-minded and, well, alien.

When they stepped off the bridge Derek let out a small “Ah!” of realization. “That was a science fiction reference, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_. You know it?”

He nodded. “My father had a small collection of Terran classic literature in our house on Vulcan. Mother didn’t normally approve of me busying myself with non-educational reading but whenever she went to work at the Vulcan consulate my father would let me read a few chapters, to have some tie to my human heritage.”

“Your mom didn’t get mad?”

“Vulcans do not get –”

Stiles shook his head in mock-despair, waving Derek off. “I know, I know. I mean what did she do about you dismaying her.”

“She didn’t know,” Derek answered a bit hurriedly.

“Huh, I thought Vulcans didn’t lie.”

“She didn’t ask, I didn’t say, therefore I didn’t lie." He explained, his tone slightly amused. "I believe there’s a common Terran phrase is, _what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her_?” 

“You little rebel you,” Stiles teased, nudging Derek with his elbow.

“Boys, you can flirt after we make sure you’re both not in any immediate danger,” Lydia called, expression annoyed but her green eyes glinting with anything but. What was going on in her pretty head?

Lydia had changed into a robe with her hair held up in a messy bun and a small heating pad around her throat, all the screaming and talking that occurred last week really did a number on her vocal chords, fearing she could develop nodules she asked the healers to soothe and fix her throat.

Derek and Stiles had also changed into soft, silky robes and placed on opposite ends of the room while the made-up women went back and forth working on them. Natsuki was using a scanner on his knee, checking for any damage in the joints, and Amaya had his arm turned up and limp as she pressed on certain pressure points.

“How’s this?” she asked him, pressing on the middle of his forearm, making his fingers reflexively curl into his hand. “Feel any pain in your muscles?”

“None.”

Natsuki used the hairdryer-esque white scanner on his calves. “You said you suffered several consecutive muscle spasms after you were shocked by electricity?”

“Yes,” Stiles said distractedly, watching Derek slide the shoulders of his robe down to his elbows as the healer checked the back of his neck and his spine.

He never noticed this before under the blue Science uniform but dude was ripped. How did he even get that big, didn’t Vulcans practice some kind of yoga? Or was it meditation? Who knows they’re both boring and on a matt.

An electric burst of pain started in the middle of Stiles’ wrist. His hand jerked out of Amaya’s grip and a heavy weak feeling starting taking over his arm through his darkening veins, feeling like he was suddenly losing a lot of blood.

Feeling faint, Stiles slumped off his chair, blacking out the second his head hit the floor.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to comment & kudos

               

 

He floated in pitch-black endless void, not knowing which was up or down and which was right or left.

A bolt of lightning tore the darkness, opening up like a wound and flooding everything with bright light. The blinding white in front of him ceased burning his retinas, losing its fuzziness and becoming as solid as a white wall. Thunder rumbled through the void and the whiteness in front of him broke into a million scattered shards, quickly inverting his world. He was once again floating in the void but this time several small gold dots blinked open and floated around, buzzing like either bugs or contained sparks.

“Stiles,” small, airy voices called. “Can you feel it, Stiles?”

The lights flew around him, all whispering the same question over and over as they merged into a humming whirlpool of light.

_Stiles. Can you feel it, Stiles? Stiles. Can you see it, Stiles? Stiles. Can you see it? Can you see me?_

He slammed his hands over his ears, trying to block out some of the menacing, high-pitched chants of the golden light.

This was a dream. He was dreaming. All he had to do was wake up.

“Wake up! Wake up! WAKE UP!”

All sound got sucked back into the void and he was left in dead silence until one deep accented voice echoed around him. “You are not asleep.”

“If I’m not asleep then what is this?”

The voice spoke again. “You are in the place between wakefulness and sleep.”

“Great, I’m in Limbo. Does that make you the Virgil to my Dante?”

Shiver-inducing laughter came from the void. “I am much more than that.”

A sudden gush of cold wind rushed past him, ruffling his hair and making his eyes water. The voice appeared right by his ear, its damp, sharp teeth grazing his ear.

Stiles flew forwards, half-disgusted and half-freaked out.

The void _wooshed_ again and the gold dots of light flickered back into existed, blinking on and off like Christmas lights, shedding a little light on the thing in front of him.

If he screamed, would anyone hear him?

A hunched-over, hulking man with a mummified head and hands, greying yellow claws and a small tear wear his mouth should be, showing nothing but razor-sharp metallic teeth dripping with a green-ish black substance that must have been venom.

“My, what big teeth you have,” Stiles stuttered, trying hard to keep his voice steady. “You should really get those checked because I heard if your gums start to fester and bleed then it means you aren’t flossing enough.”

A deep, cruel, smokey laugh was his answer. “I want to play a game.”

“What kind of game?”

“A game to test your mind, see if you are fit.”

“Fit for what?” Stiles was getting nervous, chills were setting each and every hair on end.

The Void didn’t answer but asked instead, _“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt.”_

The Void encircled him, smelling of burnt flesh and death. _“Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.”_ It sank its claws into his shoulders, paralyzing him from the waist up. _“It lies behind stars and under hills and empty holes it fills.”_

It ripped its claws from his skin, leaving behind a small, squirming feeling deep inside his fresh wounds, like several small bugs had dug their way in. _“It comes first and follows after, ends life and kills laughter.”_

Ignoring his pain, Stiles focused on what he just heard. Whatever this dream or state was, he knew from a shit-ton stories back on Earth that when a monster challenged you to answer a riddle it meant one thing, you get only one chance and if you answer wrong you’re dinner.

The best answer was always the simplest, the one staring you in the face and right now it was complete “Nothingness.”

The Void opened its mouth wide and out came thousands of bursting balls of yellow light, shocking his skin and burning his hair as they overtook him. Stiles screamed but all he heard was a clap of thunder and the quick whip-like crack of a lightning strike.

 

* * *

 

Stiles was a restless sleeper, he always had been. There had been incidents where he woke up Scott in the middle of the night just by reciting entire passages from his _Intergalactic History_ in his sleep or by mumbling a string of nonsensical things like “Marinating a frog in radioactive lemonade gives you Jabba the Hutt.”

But this wasn’t their dorm at the Academy and Stiles wasn’t tossing and turning, he was dead still and flat on his back on a rosewood massage table, with his veins sticking up against his sickly pale skin.

“Any idea what this is yet?” Scott asked his mother, the Head Nurse of the Enterprise, and their Commanding Medical Officer Alan Deaton.

Deaton pressed to fingers under Stiles’ jaw. “His pulse is steady, so is his breathing, he isn’t dehydrated, exhausted or malnourished but the brain scan Miss Amaya took is a bit worrying.”

Derek came out of the shadowed corner behind Deaton, startling Melissa and Scott. “What does it show?”

Deaton pressed the back of the hand-held scanner, projecting a holographic x-ray of Stiles’ brain. “Nothing.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Scott asked.

“Nothing as in no brain activity.”

Scott nearly slipped off his chair. “He’s brain-dead?”

“Could be,” said Deaton, his calmness and mild interest setting Scott further on edge.

“How did this happen? He was fine just ten minutes ago!”

Melissa pushed Scott back into his seat before he could grab Deaton by the lapels and shake him. “Scott, we don’t know anything for certain.”

“If you’re not certain don’t tell me my best friend is a vegetable!” He peeked over her shoulder to Derek. “You must have some idea what this is, it’s definitely from the cloud, he tried telling me about it earlier.”

Derek looked down at Stiles with worried eyes, the most emotion Scott had ever seen on the Vulcan’s face. “I can attempt a mind-meld with him, search his mind, see what he saw, feel what he felt, maybe even bring him back.”

“Why didn’t you mention that before?” Melissa asked him, keeping Scott steady.

Derek avoided his eyes as he explained. “A mind-meld is not a quick fix, it is a very…intimate process, usually reserved for sharing memories or transferring _katras_ – souls to the closest confidante, or mostly forming a mental link between spouses.”

“Scott, maybe it’s not a wise decision,” Deaton began.

“When have I ever taken the wise decision?” Scott slid off his seat sideways, out of his mother’s grip and up to Stiles’ side. “I’m not asking you to marry him, I’m asking you to dig around and find out what’s wrong.”

“Sir –” Derek began but Scott was too panicked to argue, he felt so antsy he wanted to rip a door off its hinges. “Don’t make me order you.”

Derek silently agreed and placed the tips of his fingers to the psi-points on the side of Stiles’ face, closing his eyes and clearing his mind as he initiated the meld.

Derek’s eyes moved back and forth behind his eyelids. Stiles’ breathing grew faster and sweat started dripping down from his hairline.

Like he had been shocked, Derek flew back, clutching his hand close to his chest and Stiles woke with a gasp, sitting upright with his hand over his heart.

Panting, he looked around with dazed and confused eyes. “What happened?”

Scott pulled him into a hug, feeling the tightness in his chest ease up. “You passed out.”

“I did?” Stiles looked down at his right hand, clenching and unclenching his long fingers, his skin back to its normal shade of beige. “I’m not going to live that down, am I?”

Scott clapped him on the back, smiling. “Nope.”

Deaton scanned Stiles’ head again. Stiles jumped at the beeping of the scanner and swatted at him. “Hey, the damage is in my leg not my head.”

Deaton projected the latest X-Ray, showing three perspectives of his brain, each wave of activity in a distribution of different colors along both hemispheres. “Could be both.”

Derek and Melissa looked at the holograms from over Deaton’s shoulder, wearing matching looks of thoughtful suspicion.

“What?” said Scott and Stiles in unison.

“Apart from this,” Deaton circled a bright yellow spot on the overhead view. “Which is your ADD, your brain is in perfect working order.”

“That’s good, so why’re you all looking at me like I grew a third arm?”

“The precious scan showed zero activity, it was entirely grey.”

“Then your scanner’s busted,” said Stiles, poking his right knee. “Back to my arm and leg, find anything torn or burned?”

Deaton answered slowly, like he was taking his time thinking of his answer. “You have torn a ligament in your knee, must have happened when you fell on deck. I’ve tried my best to speed up the healing with my equipment so don’t put much pressure on it.”

Stiles swung his legs off the table, eyes tired and hair sticking up in strange angles, faintly smelling of smoke. “Thanks, Doc. Now I gotta get dressed, so, do you mind?”

Everyone left the room, pulling the accordion door behind them. A fault in the door made it open up by half an inch, but that was enough for Scott to see the black in Stiles’ veins travel up his arms and fade at his neck just as the tremor in his right hand started again.

Scott backed up and bumped into Derek, who stared over his head and through the crack in the door as Stiles clumsily pulled a shirt on.

“What did you see, in his head, what did you see?”

Derek looked down at him, eyebrows pinched in thought. “Nothing.”

“Don’t tell me it was nothing.”

“No, you misunderstand, I saw nothing, no thoughts, no memories, no feelings, like I was being blocked.” He massaged the wrist of the hand he used for the meld, his own veins looking darker than usual on his green-tinted skin. “It was like sticking my hand in an open mouth and having it bite my arm.”

Scott, too worried to point out that Derek used a metaphor correctly, had to wonder what this was because if he lost both his First and Science Officer to some strange infection from this cloud then Noshiko had a lot to answer for.

Lydia and Allison rushed across the shack, stopping in front of them, out of breath and red-faced.

“Three of the security crew, dead,” said Allison.

“Kira, missing. Found her bag in a koi pond,” continued Lydia.

“Dead how?”

Lydia shook her head, the corners of her lips turning down in mild disgust, wrinkling her nose like she was remembering a particularly bad scent.

Allison put an arm around her. “Lynched, essentially, but with their throats cut.”

Like someone had tied his legs to a rock and thrown him overboard, Scott found it difficult to breathe and it wasn’t his asthma acting up again. “Lydia, go to the embassy and find out, is there an escaped convict, is this a hate crime, is this some crazy ritual, I don’t care how you get an answer but do it.”

Lydia nodded, leaving quietly, still looking a bit ill.

“Allison, I remember you had a stash of weapons in your room, did you bring them aboard the ship?”

Allison showed him the side of her boot, were a Taser-knife was sheathed. “Always prepared.”

“Good, I need you to make rounds for the entire crew, ask them all to set their phasers to kill and organize a search party for Kira.”

“Kill? But we never –”

“Somebody killed three of our men, our security specifically, this is an attack on us while we’re off-duty, Starfleet won’t have a cow if we fight back.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, concern in her eyes as she turned back.

“Derek, you stay with Stiles.”

Derek opened his mouth to object but Scott raised a hand, cutting him off. He tried to keep his nervous panic to a minimum, the last thing he needed was an outburst in front of the guy who was the favoured by the higher-ups for captaincy because they thought Scott was inferior in every way. “Look, if Deaton didn’t find something solid then it’s up to you to figure out what’s up with Stiles and that cloud, keep an eye on him, try to contact any of the resident weather scientists –”

“Meteorologists,” Derek corrected.

“Yes, that, ask them about that damn cloud.”

“Where are you going?”

Scott jogged out of the medicine shack, trying to keep a straight face. “To join the search party!”

* * *

 

Noshiko watched the Enterprise’s crew run around like headless chickens. Three guardians dead and tied to a tree, one girl missing and on suffering from strange after-effects from his interaction with the cloud. _Which should have remained dormant and unseen to anyone not native to Hotaru_ , thought Noshiko, the icy fingers of anxiety digging into her heart.

It was starting again, someone was sacrificing humans in threes, trying to wake up the worst of the spirits that made up the cloud, her fellow fox spirits, the very ones she herself once brought into this dimension 300 years ago back on Earth. She knew she couldn't send them back after she summoned them so she banished them to the limbo between this realm and the next, but the idiot going around murdering people in threes was slowly tearing open a doorway, letting them back in.

Noshiko had no choice but to ask for help from another kind of dark spirit, one she could have some control over.

She took out all nine of her fox tails in their black knife form and snapped three, feeling the power drain from her as fireflies glowed into existence and formed the tall, masked figures of the Oni.

“Find my daughter then kill whoever was infected by the lightning, before the Nogitsune can take his form.”

Lightning tore across the sky with an earth-shaking crack of thunder and all three Oni unsheathed their katanas and bowed, leaving in three wisps of black smoke.


	3. Chapter 3

Five hours of searching led to four missing crewmembers, three dead nurses from the Med Bay, two quarantined officers, one offended embassy – “And a partridge in a pear tree!”

The communicator in Stiles’ hand sniped, _“This isn’t funny, Stiles.”_

“Anything can be funny if you try,” he told Lydia, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand since his right was being a right bitch, sending out sparks of pain every time he used it. Who knew electricity caused such awful cramps.

After being given some kind of healing potion, which tasted suspiciously like flowery tea, Stiles and Derek were still stuck in the medicine shack under a 24 hr. observation and Stiles was bored out of his mind.

Derek was sitting in the corner, tapping around his PADD, trying to contact anyone from Starfleet who ever studied the planet and its atmosphere, and trying to find out if Stiles was in danger of being fried from the inside out.

A long-suffering sigh was his answer.

“Okay, okay, tell me everything.”

Lydia hurriedly explained that three nurses and three security guards were found tied to trees with slashed throats and three more apart from Kira were missing and that the embassy was denying having any part of this but when they refused to help look for the killer until Scott told them that this could be viewed as an act of war, giving Scott the right to request backup from the nearest Federation planet.

“Apart from Kira, did you find out who were the missing people?”

_“Yes.”_

“If the first three were security, the next three were medical then what did those three work as on our ship?”

_“That’s the odd part, they all worked in different ends of the ship.”_

Stiles cursed under his breath. Every good mystery had a pattern but something this organized and ritualistically crazy had to follow some kind superstitious or religious ideal. The whole In Threes thing backed it up because in some cultures thought the number three was sacred and divine.

While thinking of the number 3 the backwards number 5 flashed across his thoughts and the mummified monster from his nightmare appeared right next to Derek, beckoning him with a clawed, bandaged hand.

Stiles shook his head like a wet dog, squeezing his eyes shut for a minute but when he opened them the Void was still there, circling the wooden footrest Stiles sat on.

“Derek!”

Derek looked up. “Is there a problem, are you in anymore pain?”

Stiles pointed to the Void but his cramped so loudly he heard his bones snap. His left hand involuntarily twisted up, unbalancing him, making him drop his communicator.

 _“Stiles?”_ asked Lydia’s tinny voice.

“Don’t you see that?”

Derek looked from Stiles to the Void, his face blank as ever. “See what?”

Stiles pointed with his foot. “That!”

The Void laughed, a laugh as deep and rumbling as thunder in the dead of night, circling back to Derek, his loose bandages dragging along the floor, filling the room with a soft, scraping sound, his stiff, hunched, limping march reminiscent of a zombie’s slow, menacing creep.

The Void dragged its claws along Derek’s throat, igniting a raging fire deep in Stiles’ gut.

“Don’t touch him!”

Derek looked up again, frowning at Stiles. “Touch who?”

“Not you, him!”

Confusion, that’s all he got. No reaction at all to the thing hovering behind him and dragging its sharp claw along his jugular.

“What do you want?” he asked it.

“You know what I want.”

“I don’t, I really don’t!”

The Void let go of Derek’s neck and turned its claw onto the wall behind his head, carving out a backwards 5. “You will soon.”

The Void phased through the wood and Stiles’ entire body jerked in a brief seizure until Derek jumped up and took his left hand, pressing on the same pressure points Natsuki and Amaya did earlier, the pain lessened quickly, light it was being flushed out of his system. His mind was calmed for a few moments as he watched the long, adept fingers massage his pain away and the black flowing through his veins transfer to Derek’s.

“You’re in extreme pain,” Derek stated.

Stiles’ teeth chattered in tune with his shaking. “No shit, Sherlock.”

Derek bent his knees, looking Stiles in the eye. “What are you looking at?”

"Nothing."

"Who were you talking to, just now."

"No one."

Stiles opened his mouth, thought better of it and closed it. If he mentioned seeing a creepy bandaged man creeping about carving numbers on walls then Deaton would subject him to a lot of tests.

He settled for shrugging and picking his communicator off the floor. “Lydia, you still there?”

The speakers released the sound of heeled boots stomping on concrete then someone slipping and cursing. _“Yes, hi, I’m here.”_

“Did you find Kira?”

_“No, but we found the other three and Scott’s threat finally got the embassy and the local police to help us search for our serial killer.”_

“Any link between the other three?”

_“Nothing I found.”_

Someone knocked at the door, Derek left to answer it. Stiles reached for Derek’s PADD. “Think I can access our database from here, get everyone’s extended history?”

_“You can.”_

Stiles entered the Intergalactic Federation of Planets network and ran through the names of the nine people found dead. “There has to be something connecting all of them.”

Derek returned with a large food tray, laden with wooden bowls of strange seafood, rice, raw meat and a steaming teapot. He seemed to be having a staring contest with what must have been this planet’s version of an octopus.

“I’ll call you back,” he said to Lydia, shutting the communicator.

Stiles slipped off the footrest and sat across from him at the short table and picked up the chopsticks and a bowl of steaming rice. “Food, finally!”

Derek struggled with his chopsticks, he didn’t seem to know what to do with them exactly kept trying to stab the steamed bean pods. Stiles never thought anything that looked so serious could look so silly at the same time.

“Here.” He reached over and formed Derek’s fingers around the chopsticks. “That’s how you hold them, and this is how you use them.”

Derek snatched his hand away from Stiles, a green blush creeping all the way up to his ears. “Yes, thank you.”

Yeesh, did he think Stiles had cooties or that human illogicality was contagious or something? Stiles knew the guy could barely stand him but come on, he could at least humor him, being sick and slightly delusional and all.

Stiles shook the thought, and the hallucination he had of the Void, out of his head. He was just overworked, stressed, tired and ill and right now some weird craziness was happening to his crew, the least had to worry about was why Derek still hated him.

He watched Derek uncomfortably chew on the bean pods and stare at the tiny octopus-like creature in the center of the tray, with its sixteen curled, blue tentacles and four-eyed head, and tried to remember what was so bad about their time before boarding the Enterprise.

Oh, yeah. He drunkenly hit on Derek then panicked when he saw him in his Advanced Physics class the next day.

He didn’t think it was that bad. It was the first day back in class after Winter Break at the Academy in San Francisco, Lydia had bullied Stiles into taking Advanced Physics III with her even he though he thought I and II were enough, thank you very much. But one did not simply say no to Lydia Martin. They went to the class, sat in the third row of the lecture hall and in came the new TA announcing that their professor was busy and that the old TA was on maternity leave and he was going to be their substitute.

Derek didn’t look like what you’d expect the typical Vulcan to look like, sure he had the ramrod-straight posture, hands usually behind his back, pale skin with a hint of green to the color and a mostly expressionless face, but he didn’t have the famous bowl-cut and he had an ever-present light stubble. That was later explained when he mentioned that Earth was the home of his father, making him half-Vulcan.

Either way, the second Stiles figured out why he looked so familiar he couldn’t keep in the loud gasp of “SONOVABITCH, IT’S HIM!” disrupting the entire class. Stiles then slid further down into his seat and hid behind his textbook, settling to watch the lecture from over the top of the book.

He thought he was going to die when Derek looked straight at him, recognition in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything, he just said, “Turn to chapter one,” and started writing on the board. Which, might he add, was the best part of class, getting to see Derek’s shirt stretch across broad shoulders and all the muscles in his back move with every word he wrote.

Lydia usually had to stick her fingers under his chin and shut his gaping mouth for him with a sigh of “Honestly, Stiles…”

After he realized the fact that Derek – sorry, Mr. Hale – was never going to mention their little encounter, he managed to be himself, his obnoxious, sarcastic and know-it-all self…which might be why he can’t stand him. But shouldn’t Vulcans value intelligence?

Maybe they didn’t value it when you argued with them and proved the formula they used as an example was a hack. But Lydia agreed with him that didn’t make sense, Derek didn’t turn his Brows of Fury on her whenever she spoke, or try to evade her company as much as possible.

Huh, then again, Derek usually ignored anyone who wasn’t Scott.

For a second, a sick feeling settled in the bottom of his gut and it wasn’t from the energy drain the lightning gave him. Did Derek like Scott, like him- _like him?_ Is that way he was always giving them dirty looks?

But…nah, he’s a Vulcan, if anything he’s more likely to be attracted to a mathematical formula than Scott.

Derek poked the four-eyed octopus with his chopstick. “Are we supposed to eat this?”

Stiles stopped passive-aggressively chewing on his blue sashimi. “Oh, that? Watch this.” He picked up the pitcher of soy sauce and dumped some on the tentacles and they jerked to life, flapping about aimlessly, shocking Derek into dropping his chopsticks and reaching for his phaser.

Stiles laughed. “It’s not alive, don’t worry.”

“Then why is it moving?”

“Nerves? I don’t know. It’s still funny though.” Stiles cut off one of the tentacles and chewed on it. Derek watched him intently, either fearing he was going to choke and die or Stiles’ chewing was that much of a weird sight. “What?”

“Couldn’t it be poisonous?”

“Could be. We have a lot of East Asian fusion restaurants near the Academy, I always tried to get Scott into sushi but he thinks it’s weird, which it is. The only risky thing I ever ate was raw blowfish, if you eat a part cut close to a certain part of the fish then you might get paralyzed.”

“Why would humans deliberately eat something that can put them at risk?”

Stiles shrugged. “’Cause we’re stupid?”

“You’re not stupid,” Derek said, seeming almost offended. “You’re quite brilliant, you just don’t apply yourself. You could have been given your own ship if you took the Kobayashi Maru test.”

Stiles wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or confused. “But I didn’t want my own ship. You could have gotten command of your ship.”

Derek went back to poking the octopus. “I could have, but I refused.”

Stiles set his elbows gently on the table, leaning closer with his face in his palms, batting his eyes for good measure. “Too much responsibility, right? I wouldn’t be able to deal with having like three-hundred people under my command, I’d probably lose my wits every time the ship got in danger.”

“Neither could I. Despite what Captain McCall thinks, I never strived for the control of the Enterprise, I’m more of an observer, that’s why I applied for Science Officer.”

“Why Starfleet though? Couldn’t you go to the Vulcan Science Academy?”

“I could have,” Derek said, unconsciously leaning closer. “But they made it very clear I wasn’t welcome. I turned them down and left for Earth.”

“So, is Derek really your name or is that the name you chose when you came here?”

“It is the human name closest to my own, you wouldn’t be able to pronounce it. What is your real name?”

Stiles smirked. “You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.”

Stiles’ communicator beeped, disrupting their staring contest.

“Hey, Scotty.”

Scott panted in his ear. _“We found Kira.”_

“That’s great – you found her alive, right?”

_“She’s alive, she’s more than alive, she’s full of energy.”_

“That’s good!”

 _“No, you don’t get it.”_ Stiles’ communicator beeped again, issuing out a hologram of Kira standing in a pond, her head turned up the sky, her eyes bright orange and her entire body covered in sparking rings of electricity. _“She’s literally full of energy.”_

“Uh. Um. Wow,” Stiles couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Did the cloud infect Kira too, could this be even called being infected? Was that going to happen to him, too?

“Derek, any ideas?”

Derek shook his head, looking back and forth between Kira and Stiles.

“Unbelievable, first that creepy burn victim, then the serial killer and now this.”

Scott and Derek spoke in unison. “Burn victim?”

Stiles tried to backtrack but a distraction came in the form of the shack’s door being blown off.

Three smokey wisps flew into the room, floating around a single ball of gold light each, just like the dots in Stiles’ nightmare.

“What?” he breathed, the communicator slipping through his fingers.

The wisps spun, taking the form of three tall masked men in black hooded coats and gloves, brandishing long, slim, sharp swords.

In any other situation, Stiles would proudly point out that he recognized this getup from his World Cultures class, that they were the Oni, but in this situation he just flew back with a shout.

Derek quickly shot one with his phaser but the red laser-blast went through his chest like a bullet through water, slow, muted and ineffective. The masked man’s chest sealed itself back up and all three moved closer, backing Derek up until he tripped over the table and fell next to Stiles.

All three advanced in a steady march. When they got too close Derek jumped up. "Stiles, run!"

Stiles scrambled up and away, but the two other men materialized in front of him in an instant, swords drawn. Derek caught the leader's sword hand but it's strength overpowered him, refusing to budge and pushing Derek down to his knees instead. The lead masked man looked at him with a curious tilt to his head then he stuck his hand through Derek's head, knocking him out.

Derek dropped to his knees then fell to his side. The Oni stepped over his body and Stiles found himself surrounded.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Void creeping around the room, his deep-voiced chuckling reverberating in the quiet of the room, "You know what I want. You know what to do."

And Stiles did. 

The Oni in front of him moved to attack but Stiles was quicker, punching his fist through its wispy chest and gripping the firefly powering it, feeling the weakness weighing his body down trade places for new, steady power as the Oni exploded in a burst of light and shadow.

Yeah, he knew what to do.

 


	4. Chapter 4

This was the last time Scott was ever going to take Deaton’s advice on anything, especially vacation spots.

Since arriving on Hotaru he’s had his best friend infected by some storm, nine members of his crew murdered, Kira kidnapped for the same purpose but her sudden transformation into Storm from _X-Men_ burned her captor – who still got away – and three boogiemen with samurai swords attack Stiles and Derek.

Speaking of Stiles and Derek, they both haven’t said a word since Scott and his search party got back to the medicine shack. Stiles was in some kind of a daze, unable to focus or do more than shake his head or nod and Derek had hauled himself over to a corner, folded his legs and shut his eyes, breathing in and out steadily. Scott had tried meditating a couple of times but it didn’t take, he didn’t have patience for things he didn’t understand.

One thing was for certain, both Stiles and Derek didn’t remember what happened after they got attacked or where these Oni things went. For that matter, Kira didn’t remember anything either.

“You sure you didn’t see who attacked you?” Scott asked Kira, back in her personal quarters on the Enterprise. Her small room was pretty standard, the only interesting parts being the pillowcases with cartoon foxes on her bed, a vintage lava lamp on her nightstand, a picture frame of Kira and her father in her Starfleet graduation cap and gown, and a single samurai sword hanging above her bed.

Kira paused toweling her wet hair. “Hard to see them when they attacked me from behind.”

After they had moved Derek and Stiles back aboard the Enterprise for safety precautions, Scott had Deaton, his mother and then the Hotaru healers check her for any signs of infection like Stiles. They all declared that Kira was as healthy as a horse and as electric as an eel.

How or why? Nobody had an answer for that yet but Lydia’s best guess was that the cloud must have jumpstarted some dormant side of Kira’s genes, a part that apparently generated enough electricity to power all of Switzerland.

Kira shook her wet hair, some of the leftover heat rolling off her body quickly frizzed up small sections of her inky black hair. “All I know is that it was a woman.”

“How could you tell?”

“I could smell her perfume when she was trying to cut my throat out. It’s a lot like the one Lydia wears.”

“Ah.”

Scott tried opening a conversation again. “You’re taking this pretty well, if I was you I would have thought I’d have gone mad.”

“Pretty _shocking_ , isn’t it?” Kira joked.

Scott’s uneven jaw slid further to one side in a small smile. “I’m pretty _shaken_.”

“It wasn’t that bad, it came and went in a _flash_.”

“But you were pretty _stunning_.”

Their eyes met and they burst out laughing.

“Puns, Stiles would be proud of us,” said Scott, shaking his head fondly.

“So you don’t think I’m stunning?” she asked, giving him a cheeky, suggestive look.

“I think you’re more than that,” Scott blurted out, instantly regretting it.

Kira’s eyes widened in surprise, he never noticed their exact color, not really brown but not really amber, an odd, vibrant in-between encircled by black, clearer now with the hit of power still thrumming within her.

He cleared his throat and tried again. “So, did you suspect you were something like this?”

Kira’s eyes flit to the picture frame on her nightstand, her mother was in none of the pictures. “Not this exactly, no. My mother wasn’t human so I always knew I had to be a bit different but I kind of expected to grow a tail or two, not turn into a generator.”

“What is your mother?”

She stuck out her bottom lip and turned up her hands. “Don’t know. All I know is that she disappeared after I was born and she refused to let my dad take pictures of her.”

Scott crossed his arms, setting his elbows on the small table between them. “Your kidnapper, did they by any chance boast about their evil plans while they were tying you up?”

She shook her lowered head, twisting the towel in her lap. “Sadly no. What kind of villain doesn’t tell you their entire evil plan upfront, right?”

“Mostly because the captive hero always escapes, which you did, quite awesomely,” Scott told her, feeling himself get a bit sidetracked but he was too exhausted to care. “It’ll be much easier now tracking down someone who’s probably brain-fried.”

“Literally, because I went all BZZZT!” She waved her hands around, making buzzing electric noises. “I hope that gave her Bride of Frankenstein hair.”

“Or turned made her as brain-fried as Doc Brown.”

“Doc Brown was a crazy time-traveller, not a crazy murderer.”

“But he would have been the type of crazy murderer to tell you his evil plan upfront.”

“ _Back to the Future_ with Doc as a cheesy James Bond villain, I’d kill to see that.” Kira quickly cringed as the word kill left her mouth. “Is it bad that we’re joking about this?”

Scott smiled what he hoped was a comforting smile, leaning on his elbows and clasping his hands together, focusing on his twiddling fingers so he wouldn’t see her reaction to his answer. “I don’t think so. I can’t really multitask, so I can’t mourn, get angry, feel guilty _and_ run around keeping the crew together while trying to put an end to this. If I let everything get to me all at once I don’t think I’d be a help to anyone.”

“Spoken like a true leader.” Kira reached over and took his hand. “Stiles once told me that anything can be funny, depending on how you look at it.”

“Yeah, well, Stiles ranks higher on the sociopath chart than I do. He always told me my problem was that I cared too much, about everyone, even the people that wronged me, so I’m trying to do what’s best, which is be detached and get the job done faster.”

“You mean become like Derek?”

He thumbed the back of her hand, feeling the energy hum under her skin. “Yeah, a bit more like Derek.”

 

Derek was starting to believe Stiles really did infect him.

Not with the thundercloud’s infection, (Vulcans are immune to the majority of human ailments) but with his existence. The thought of him disrupted Derek’s organized train of thought, sidetracking him and making his attempts at meditation quite difficult.

It didn’t help that they were both still quarantined to the same room – Stiles’ room, to be precise, seeing as the First Officer’s quarters were bigger and connected to the Captain’s quarters.

Derek gave up completely on meditating and opened his eyes. Stiles was on his bed, playing some virtual game on his PADD, smiling that same triumphant smile he wore whenever he won an argument against Derek in their Advanced Physics class.

The memory of that year was still bright in Derek’s mind. His first year on Earth was comprised of adjusting to humans, navigating life in Starfleet, visiting his human half-sister Laura and trying not to let his emotions leak out every time Stiles challenged him to entertain his theories and scenarios in class.

That was what was truly infecting him: memories of Stiles. Not even important ones, mostly pointless ones like the memory of Stiles attempting to explain what puns were after he told him “What do you mean you can’t do it? Dammit, man, are you a Vulcan or a VulCan’t?” or referring to Derek as a Martian, Santa’s Not-So-Little Helper, a computer and Elrond.

Derek didn’t understand what any of those meant but he knew they were insults.

He endured too many snide insults back on Vulcan, about his human father, about his appearance, about how he had to be grown in an artificial womb because his mother and father couldn’t naturally cross-breed or about how the only logical reason his mother married his father was because she wanted to strengthen her position as the Vulcan Ambassador to Earth. Meaning his isolated, restrained and unsatisfying existence was nothing more than a statement.

He tried to be the model Vulcan to appease his mother, her family and everyone else but it was clear he’d never be one of them, even if he did everything they wanted, attended the Vulcan Science Academy, married the woman his clan elder matched him to and continued on as logical and emotionless as possible, he would still be the half-breed.

Judging by the situation he’s in now, he’ll never marry a woman, chosen for him or otherwise.

Stiles tossed his PADD onto the bed and sat up, his hair sticking up in all possible directions and dark circles under his eyes. “I’m bored.”

“I can see that.”

“Entertain me.”

“No.”

“We’re trapped here for at least another day, at least think of something.”

“No.”

Stiles slid down the front of the bed, to the floor and crawled over, “Tsk, so unreasonable.”

Derek kept his feeling of offense completely off his face and forgot to keep it out of his tone, “ _I’m_ unreasonable?”

Stiles reached his desk and got out multi-level chessboard. “Very.”

“Mind explaining what is so unreasonable about me?”

Stiles walked over to him on his knees, chessboard raised above his head so he could see. “If I need to explain to you how unreasonable your everything is then you’re not half as smart I think you think you are which you think is twice as smart as you actually are and not actually just as smart or even less smart than I am,” Stiles rambled, rendering Derek speechless.

He offered the chessboard to Derek, slowly and unsurely asking, “Chess?”

“Would that be a good solution to your crippling boredom and my being unreasonable?”

Stiles let out an equally slow and unsure “Yes?”

Derek settled himself opposite Stiles, claiming the black chess pieces. “White moves first.”

Stiles clapped, delighted. The shine in his brown eyes was back, even for just this moment, it made him seem almost healthy again, just like every other blazing memory Derek had of him.

The only issue was the one memory his superior brain couldn’t dig up: What happened in the shack after they were attacked and what attacked them exactly, because he couldn’t remember at all. What he did remember was Stiles’ brief lapse in lucidity, screaming at an invisible being when he was talking with Lieutenant Martin.

Perhaps it was another symptom of his illness.

Derek moved his pawn forward on the lowest level of the Tri-Dimensional Chessboard and Stiles immediately dispatched it with his own.

“What do you think happened back there?”

Derek moved another pawn forward. “I assume whatever attacked us either changed their minds or were chased off by something.”

Stiles moved a knight two squares down and one square to the side, taking Derek’s pawn again. “Maybe they realized they got the wrong house and left. Do you think they were connected to the killings?”

Derek pondered his next move, the sidetracked part of his find focusing on Stiles’ long fingers, playing with one of his own pawns. “No. The killer commits these sacrifices personally, the Oni were sent by someone else.”

“Figured as much.”

Derek moved a rook to face Stiles’ knight, Stiles slid his knight to the diagonal white square, smiling at Derek smugly. “Why would someone who could control those things send them after us, why not send them after the one actually causing us problems?”

“Maybe they suspect you’re another problem,” Derek said thoughtfully, thinking of when he tried to meld with Stiles’ mind, of the complete nothingness he found, of the amount of pain he felt travelling up and down Stiles’ limbs and of Yeoman Yukimura’s last-minute, life-saving power. He wondered if she had always been this way or if this was another cloud-related issue.

Derek wondered if this was a mutation that Stiles didn’t develop, instead of absorbing or conducting electricity it was just killing him. What did that mean to Derek if he did die?

Logically, it wasn’t his problem. Stiles wasn’t his from his clan and he wasn’t his spouse, he didn’t even know his real name, yet just thinking about worrying about him caused more unwanted emotions to twist around his mind.

Stiles snorted disbelievingly. “I highly doubt that. I mean, the worst thing I ever did was listen in on my dad’s police radio and sneak out with Scott to snoop around the crime scenes, but that was because we had nothing better to do.”

They quickly moved up to the second level, Stiles reacting to Derek’s calculated moves without much thought, like he had already plotted all the possible moves and outcomes in his head beforehand.

Chess had never been this difficult for him before, then again people weren’t this unpredictable for him before.

Stiles jumped at the chance to take Derek’s bishop the second Derek set it down and their fingers knocked together, unwittingly setting off Derek’s close-range telepathy, sending a small flurry of sound and color from Stiles’ brain to his. But it wasn’t a thought or a memory it was an intense, overwhelming feeling Derek hadn’t felt in years: Anxiety.

“What now?” Stiles snapped, his cheerful mood souring. “Seriously, why do you keep acting like I’m the wet food you touch when you’re washing the dishes?”

“The – sorry, what?”

Stiles huffed loud and long, blurring his lips. “Every time I so much as bump into you jump three feet in the air, what is it your problem with me?”

“I have no problem with you.”

“Bullshit!” Stiles spat. “What did I do, be honest. Are you trying not to ‘hurt my feelings’? Which would be real funny seeing as you don’t have any. I tried being nice about how frigid you are, but my god, an android would be warmer company than you –”

“You have quite the noisy brain, did you know that?”

Stiles’ rant came to an abrupt end. “Excuse me?”

“Every single time I’ve come in contact with you I have received a staggering amount of thoughts, all loud, scattered and rushed. It’s quite overwhelming.”

For a solid minute Stiles made the perfect imitation of a goldfish, opening and closing his mouth silently with an unfocused look in his round eyes.

He pointed at himself and at Derek, swapping his fingers back and forth to emphasis his confusion. “You can hear my thoughts?”

“Vulcans are touch-telepaths.”

“Touch-tele – is that why you always keep your hands behind your back?”

Stiles cast his eyes down at the chessboard. “Huh, and here I thought you were just being a dick every time you refused to shake someone’s hand.”

“I was not, Vulcan hands are as sensitive, if not more, as human lips.”

Stiles nodded, toying with one of his remaining pawns. “You’re still a dick.”

Derek didn’t say a point in objecting and resumed the game.

When they moved up to the third and final level of the chessboard Stiles finally spoke again. “How exactly does this telepathy thing work? I only took one Xenobiology course and the only mention I got about Vulcan hands were that you used them for mind-melds.”

Derek reached his hand over the board, showing Stiles his palm. “As I said, we’re touch-telepaths, our hands are incredibly sensitive and the worse sense is key here.”

Stiles pressed his thumb his bottom lip, his front teeth grazing it distractingly. “Sensitive to the touch and sensitive like a sixth sense.”

“Yes. This is why we can initiate mind-melds just placing our hands on the side of someone’s head,” explained Derek, finding himself leaning closer to place his hand on the side of Stiles’ face. Stiles closed his eyes and leaned forward. Derek’s fingertips pressed on the three psi-points on the side of Stiles’ face and a wave of dark, twisted shapes and colors being sucked into a gaping hole in the middle of a grayscale storm crashed into his thoughts

When the hole grew teeth and snapped down on the mental link between them Derek jerked back, a stinging pain in his hand just like last time.

Stiles opened his eyes, but he didn’t yell at him again or even frown, he just watched Derek intently and quietly.

It took Derek less than a minute to notice something was not quite right, the look in Stiles’ eyes wasn’t the usual energetic glint, a glimmer of mischief or annoyance or even the dull look of exhaustion, it was much more…muted. A bit detached. Colder, even.

Stiles tilted his head, still watching Derek, when a small smile curled the right corner of his mouth and he made a few short jumps with his bishop to Derek’s side of the board, setting his chess piece down with an audible clack that filled the cold, empty room.

“I have your queen,” was all he said, pressing Derek's queen against his teeth, eyes focused on him. "Your move."


End file.
